Oh Aardman, you've done it again!

Fuck, this film was funny.

As the father of an eight year old, I've seen a lot of kids' movies* so it was interesting of late to come across two interesting examples of the genre**; one shit-hot and the other just shit.

The less said about Dr Seuss' The Lorax, the better; a soulless exercise in marketing and merchandise.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits, on the other hand, had a wildness of imagination that all the best kids' films have. It was though the makers thought "yeah, bugger it, let's whack that in" to every crazy idea that came up.

Charles Darwin as a girl-obsessed, cowardly schlub? "Why not!"

A chase scene where a bath-tub full of pirates pursue Darwin and his monkey butler down a flight of stairs, after Darwin stole the last dodo? "Makes sense to me!"

Jane Austen throwing a beer stein at the Elephant Man? "Absolutely!"

And after The Pirates! Band of Misfits, I watched a film I recorded earlier about Nazi zombies.

What a top night!

* And I mean a loooooooooot of kids' films.

** Ooooh, high-brow.

Yeah, why no shearers?

One of the benefits of having a depressive illness* is that you tend to spend a lot of time alone in your own mind.

During a recent 4 AM ramble through my sub-conscious I was struck like a bolt from the blue** by this revelation; none of The Boy's schoolwork involves shearers.

When I was his age, my school work was chock-a-block with shearers. Shearers' songs, shearers' strikes, shearers' stories. Why the Victorian education system was so fascinated by shearers in the late 1960s, I have no idea. Maybe it was somebody's idea to dress up Australian history so it wasn't so bloody dull, but to this day I continue to have a good working knowledge of the Australian shearing industry in the late nineteenth century.

True, this knowledge has never been called upon, but still it's early days.

* Try it coupled with chronic insomnia. It's ace!

** Or even like a bolt from Beyond Blue.***

*** I crack myself up.

A cautionary PSF.

"Beats fecking soup"

Augustus was a chubby lad;
Fat ruddy cheeks Augustus had:
And everybody saw with joy
The plump and hearty, healthy boy.
He ate and drank as he was told,
And never let his soup get cold.
But one day, one cold winter's day,
He screamed out "Take the soup away!
O take the nasty soup away!
I won't have any soup today."

Next day, now look, the picture shows
How lank and lean Augustus grows!
Yet, though he feels so weak and ill,
The naughty fellow cries out still
"Not any soup for me, I say:
O take the nasty soup away!
I won't have any soup today."

The third day comes: Oh what a sin!
To make himself so pale and thin.
Yet, when the soup is put on table,
He screams, as loud as he is able,
"Not any soup for me, I say:
O take the nasty soup away!
I WON'T have any soup today."

Look at him, now the fourth day's come!
He scarcely weighs a sugar-plum;
He's like a little bit of thread,
And, on the fifth day, he was—dead!

A "Frank should have had a cat" PSF.

"You drank all that Bourbon?"

Frank settled down out in the Valley
And he hung his wild years in a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead
He sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road
And assumed a $30,000 loan at 15 1/4 %
And put down payment on a little two bedroom place
His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
Made good bloody marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time
Had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
That had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind
They had a thoroughly modern kitchen, self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan, they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home from work
He stopped at the liquor store
Picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths
Drank 'em in the car on his way to the Shell station
He got a gallon of gas in a can
Drove home, doused everything in the house, torched it
Parked across the street laughing and watching it burn
All Halloween orange and chimney red
Then Frank put on a top forty station
Got on the Hollywood Freeway
Headed north

Never could stand that dog

It's Saint Piran's Day! Huzzah!

For those not in the know, today is Saint Piran's Day - the national day of Cornwall.


The BBC site about Saint Piran notes

In Ireland he was said to have performed many miracles but the Kings of the country were not impressed.

Not impressed?

How can you not be impressed by a Saint?

Performing "many miracles"?


Tough audience.

I got nothin'. Nothin'!

"Wake me up when the leadership spill is over."

Because I’m a lazy, lazy man, I can’t be arsed doing a PSF today.

I thought instead I'd share the lyrics from songs have stayed in my memory, for one reason or another.

What this says for my mental state, I shudder to think.

There will be a small prize for anyone who can correctly identify what songs these lyrics are taken from*.

1.         Where was I, I forgot the point that I was making.

2.         Shana-nana, ooh my my, she’s on drugs.

3.         Goddamn, Europeans!

4.         I got girl trouble. Up the ass!

5.         Welcome to the cheap seats.

6.         In these shoes? I don’t think so!

7.         Your laughing eyes, your crazy smile, every time I look in his face.

8.         I got no distance left to run.

9.         I was visiting a sick friend. I was a doctor then.

10.       Never could stand that dog.

*I don’t know what the prize will be.

Possibly a beer.

Or a lemon.

Or a beer made from lemons.

Stop! Enough already!

"Just shut the fuck up!"

I was going to write something about the ever-present nonsense coming from the Canberra Press Gallery about Labor's "leadership crisis" but then I realised that if I listened to one more second of this crap, I'd go

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG

And I didn't want to do that.

Have a look at Mr Denmore's excellent take on it here.

Also, he's much funnier.

UPDATE

So, the challenge is on.

My money (for what it's worth - which isn't much) is for a convincing Gillard victory.

But either way, for the sake of the Party, for the sake of the country and for the sake of my sanity, I hope it's pretty clear-cut.

Go the bloodnut!

"But deep, real deep"

"Mmmm, profound"

No equation

to explain the division of the senses

No sound to reflect

the radiance of time

In the beginningest dream

Halls of disorder

Where we are swept to encircle dawn

Strapped in a low car

Racing thru silence

Trumpeting bliss

You could kiss the world

goodbye

Standing outside the courthouse

in the rain

Seemed like a lost soul

from the chapel of dreams

With a handful of images

Faces of children

Phases of the moon

One little thing you get wrong

changes the dimensions

Streets, swept memory

Diffused and lost

Like a prayer in the sun

Sometimes you can't tell

whether you're waking up

or going to sleep

Spiralling

Unnumbered streets

All the games cannot be yours

All the sights, the treasures of the eye

Does the divided soul remain the same?

No equation to explain

Destiny's hand

Moved, by love

Drawn by the whispering shadows

Into the mathematics

of our desire

Shaggin' Wagon

...and so he turned to his mate and said, "Now we can all get some sleep."

But I digress.

So, back in November, my girlfriend Andromeda was invited to go camping for three nights by a friend of hers who I'll call Fat-Slapper. Mean, spiteful woman. Anyhoo, Andromeda said yes to the camping thing, even though it happened to be on her birthday weekend. I was a little annoyed because I wanted to take her out to a nice restuarant for her birthday (which I did, three days early) and also because I wasn't invited to the camping because Fat-Slapper doesn't like me and I don't like her. But on the eve of her birthday, Andromeda rang me from the camp-site and said, "I spoke to Fat-Slapper, and you can come tonight to our camp site, but with the following rules: You can only stay for one night, you can't stay in our tent - you have to stay in your car, and you and I can't have sex..."

I agreed to those rules, even though they were ludicrous, but in the end, I wanted to spend Andromeda's birthday with her, and she wanted me there. So I got to the campsite, and Fat-Slapper gave me evils for kissing Andromeda hello, and the whole night was awkward. So I got drunk. So did Andromeda.

At 2am, I went to bed in the back of my Subaru station wagon where I had shoved a mattress.

At 2.15am there was a knock at my window. It was Andromeda, looking for a birthday shag, and because I'm a gentleman, I obliged, but the things is, because I wasn't expecting sex that night (because of Fat-Slapper's rules), I wasn't armed with protection.

Back of the station wagon, metres from the beach, drunk, no condoms... you know how it goes.

Meet Perseus Jnr:



Due in August. As Lou Reed said in his song, 'Beginning Of A Great Adventure', "...It's the beginning of a great adventure."

travel special: some of europe

This was Den Haag on New Year's Eve. I think it was Russian champagne. Anyway, cheerski, comrades


This was taken in Jukkasjärvi . I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed saying, "Oh, I was just in the Arctic Circle a few weeks ago"


I loved Sweden, not least because the A tile was worth 4 points

I had five weeks of huskies, reindeer, moose (plural), gondolas, daleks, bells, rockets, Mickey Mouse waffles and it was (way, way) better than Dog Rock

Bad things that happened: we lost LittleSquib in Stockholm Airport, BigSquib left her bag in the Mona Lisa room and almost had the Louvre evacuated, a seagull pooped on me at Tuileries Garden (I plan to return and track it down Moby-Dick style), I slept on the tray table on the way home and now I have back problems

I'm a little bit sad to be home because, let's face it, this is Perth